[Feature Request] Will there ever be a select to move or resize feature?

[1nuno]

First of all this software is awesome I have been using it for a couple months right now. I was wondering if there will ever be a feature that allows selection in order to move or resize. I believe that's really the only thing that's missing for it to be even better.

[Apostolique]

I could think about it.

Right now, the app is mostly just a list of lines. Line 1, line 2, line 3, etc. Erasing is simply adding a line that has the same color as the background.

For redo and undo, all I do is draw up to line X, for example [line 1, line 2, line3] becomes [line 1, line 2] line 3. This allows me to support undo and redo all the way back to your first stroke without using much extra memory. There's a bit of bookkeeping for grouping lines.

Allowing moving or resizing wouldn't work in the current system without adding something new.

There's also the matter of the selection UX itself. Should it work with a rectangle selection and then everything gets selected. What about lines that overflow the selection bounds? Do lines get moved as a whole or they should be spliced?

[1nuno]

Oh, I see, so its not as straightforward as it may seem. I have used a couple more apps of this infinite canva style and what they usually do is a simple box selection that selects the whole line even if part of the lines are outside the selection area and I believe that works pretty well.

Regardless, even without the selection feature the app is still really good, it feels fast and smooth compared to the others available which feel a bit junky at times. Anyways, Thanks for the clarification.

[Eerolz]

There's also the matter of the selection UX itself. Should it work with a rectangle selection and then everything gets selected. What about lines that overflow the selection bounds? Do lines get moved as a whole or they should be spliced?

Only just found the project and I don't know if commenting on old request like this helps but I've found the CAD way of doing box selections is quite nice.

When the box is made dragging to the right, only select what's completely in the box. When dragging to the left, select everything that touches the box.
Especially if can combine this with Shift to make selections with several rectangles it works pretty well.

Also in a thing that's mostly a notetaking app I'd say that moving the entire lines should work in vast majority of instances.

[Apostolique]

Hey! Thanks for commenting, that's really interesting. Whole lines shouldn't be too hard to implement. Spliced lines, I'm not yet sure. Main thing to figure out would be how to handle undo and redo.

For whole lines, only the delta is needed which is a single value for all of them I think.

For selecting parts of a line though some work needs to be done for splicing. Not sure yet how my data should look like. Either I reuse the same data or I hide the existing lines and make new ones.

Anyway, mostly thinking out loud.

[Eerolz]

I'd probably draw BG color lines over the selected lines and draw new ones to the new place/size. Similarly how erase works in that way.

I think the hard part would be figuring out the eraser lines interactions. Would be easy if eraser just removed entire lines instead of painting BG color.

Someone draws something, uses big eraser to erase the drawing, draws something small there and then wants to move it.
If they select towards left, they end up selecting the eraser line as well. Moving that would end up moving the eraser with it, possibly showing something that was erased or moving the eraser line on top something they wanted visible.

Alternatively, if you select to the right, you'd not select the eraser but would select the drawing underneath hidden by the eraser. So when moving suddenly you'd have 2 drawings on top of each other.

I think this might be why on some similar app I used long ago erased entire lines, dunno what'd be the best solution.